Minnesota Wild center Mikko Kiovu (9) can’t get the puck past Winnipeg Jets goalie Chris Mason (50) during the shoot out round of Thursday’s NHL Hockey game, February 26, 2011, at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. The Jets won 4-3 in a shoot-out. (Pioneer Press: John Autey)

Effort and intensity, those things were absolutely there. The Wild have never had much of a problem mustering them under Mike Yeo, and they certainly weren’t going to have difficulty coming up with them Thursday night, in a caldron of 19,060 fans brewing what looks very much like a legitimate rivalry.

But especially at this point in the season, Minnesota is in the business of adding points to its record. And as hard as the Wild fought in their second meeting against the Winnipeg Jets, delighting a crowd filled with fans from both Minnesota and Manitoba, they went home with an end result that was all too familiar: a shootout loss.

The 4-3 decision they dropped to the Jets on Thursday night was their seventh loss in 12 shootouts this season. The Wild have been in as many shootouts as any team in the league this year, and they’ve lost more than any other. And though there was plenty to like about the way they played, especially in the third period, they couldn’t get the goal to keep themselves out of a shootout.

“Even though we didn’t get the two points, I give our guys a lot of credit right now,” Yeo said. “Lately we’ve been in every game. We’ve been giving ourselves a chance to win. It’s just climbing over that hurdle and finding that play, capitalizing on that chance in the third period. We have to find a way right now.”

Early in the season, the Wild rode a devotion to their process to the top of the league standings before skidding down the conference ladder through December and January. They’re back to concentrating more on their style of play than their results at this point, and maybe that’s what this season eventually will be about.

After a week in which they’ve lost home games to two of the three worst teams in the Western Conference (Anaheim and Detroit) before falling to the 10th-place team in the Eastern Conference on Thursday, it certainly seems like the Wild might be better served with a longer view of their future.

“We don’t have a whole lot to lose,” forward Nick Johnson said. “I don’t think we had a lot to lose at the start of the year, and then we thought we did. I think it’s coming along. You can think, ‘We didn’t get the extra point tonight; we’re out of the playoffs.’ But what’s the point in that? We can’t lose a couple in a row, but we need to play good hockey down the stretch.”

They showed signs of that against the Jets, getting two more goals from Devin Setoguchi – who now has three in five games since Mikko Koivu came back from a shoulder injury. Setoguchi’s second goal came on a power play, after he waited at the point for Marco Scandella and Nate Prosser to cycle the puck to him and fired a wrist shot through an Erik Christensen screen as he swooped into the slot.

Kyle Brodziak and Johnson also continued to do what they’ve done all season, forcing turnovers and holding the puck low in Winnipeg’s zone. That led to a few scoring chances, but Chris Mason stopped the line with some of his best work of the night, denying Matt Cullen in front of the net with 8:46 to play and turning away Johnson’s point-blank attempt with a brilliant save at the 13:53 mark.

On the other end, the Wild made a few costly mistakes, like when Evander Kane slipped behind Prosser for his first goal and Alexander Burmistrov tied the game in the third period after Nick Schultz missed an attempt to shovel the puck into the corner.

“I don’t know if it bounced over my stick or I just missed it,” Schultz said. “I’ve got to make the play there. It comes off the end boards, I kind of turned around, and I can’t let it get by me.”

The point the Wild got was the only one they managed in a four-game homestand, and now they’ll face a streaking Blues team in St. Louis on Saturday before turning around and hosting the defending champion Boston Bruins on Sunday.

Those games will make points tough to come by at a time when the Wild need them desperately. Otherwise, they might be playing for progress.

“Once again, it’s just one or two plays where we could have put one in,” Setoguchi said. “We could have scored a goal, we could have stopped one, and obviously, it’s disappointing when those aren’t going the right way. You can’t get frustrated, but right now, it’s tough to swallow.”

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